Incredible. I’ve been doing this project for ten days, which means I have decluttered ONE HUNDRED different things, and still, I have a loooong way to go. At least, it feels that way. Maybe I’ll declutter for another week and discover I’m done. Sometimes I overestimate how long a job is going to take me to finish. But looking around my house, and garage, and basement, I have a feeling this project will carry me through February. At least.

But I don’t feel demoralized. On the contrary. I feel motivated! I’m making progress and building momentum. Instead of feeling as if I’ll never make a dent in all our clutter, I know I can reclaim our home, day by day, ten items at a time.

I really appreciate all the things I learned from Marie Kondo’s book (I still haven’t watched her Netflix show), but in a backwards way, her book paralyzed me. She recommended decluttering all at once. I took this suggestion too seriously. Since I couldn’t find an entire weekend to declutter my entire home, I just didn’t declutter.

So the clutter grew and grew and grew, but with a kindergartener and preschooler, I never have the time to declutter the entire house in one go. I could declutter a closet while Julian is at preschool, but then I wouldn’t have the time to exercise and write, and I really need to exercise and write to feel like myself.

I forgot my personal rule when it comes to self-help books: self-help books can inspire me, but no book gets to dictate how I live my life. I take what works for me and leave the rest, because I’m the only person who understands my life, my experiences and my circumstances. Not even the most inspired guru in the history of humanity can predict what will work for me. I have to figure that out for myself.

So that’s what I’m doing now with my Declutter 10 Project. Figuring out what works for me during this current stage of my life. And without further ado, here is what I have purged from the Novak household:

Day 6 of Decluttering:

• An Elastigirl costume that Pippa convinced me to buy for Halloween. I fully intended to wear it but then Julian lost his shit when he saw mama getting into a costume. He thought I was going to stop being mama! It’s a plus size costume and I don’t intend to be a plus size come Halloween 2019. By sending the plus size costume to Goodwill, I’m giving myself a major vote of confidence. (I guess I could still wear the costume now, but I don’t make a habit of dressing up as a Disney super hero while running errands.)
• A bunch of clothes that Julian outgrew: two tank tops; nine t-shirts; two pairs of shorts; and one pair of black leggings. This put me over the Declutter 10 daily quota but since I was hunting through Julian’s chest of drawers, it was easier to just finish going through the drawers in one go. I created the Declutter 10 Project to help me declutter. I’m certainly not going to adhere to its “rules” religiously if that sort of zealotry would undermine my decluttering efforts.

Day 7 of Decluttering:

• A poncho that I bought a few years again because I thought it would help me take walks in the rain. It didn’t. The hood dripped water in my arms and the arms were awkward so I couldn’t listen to my iPhone. Still, I kept the damn thing because maybe I would use it eventually. Well, it has been raining A LOT in Pasadena and I have not felt the slightest inclination to use my poncho. I’d rather use an umbrella and wear my fleece. I think it’s safe to say that it’s time to let someone else have a crack at my poncho.
• Two girl-sized belts, one brown and one white. Pippa begged me for a 3-pack of belts that she spotted at Target when we were shopping for her kindergarten school clothes. She really just wanted the pink belt. Pippa herself told me I could give the other two belts away. Proud mama!
• Guess Who, the board game. This game is one of my favorites, but we could not get the new 2018 version to work. The cards would not fit in the damn slots. But I kept it? Because I thought the board game fairies would come and fix it?
• A dress up wedding gown that Pippa never wears because she thinks its itchy.
• A too-small Julian sweatshirt.
• Some of Pippa’s old clothes: a summer dress, rain boots, an Easter dress, a pink tutu, and a purple sundress. Sometimes, I hold on to these things not because I think my kids will shrink and fit into them again, but because I want to give them to my brother’s daughters. Except whenever they visit, I forget to bring out the old clothes. So then the stockpile grows. And my guilt over the clutter. So fuck it. The clothes can go to Goodwill.
• The pumpkin costume my children both wore for their first and second Halloweens. I love that pumpkin costume, and I smile whenever I see photos of my babies dressed up like a pumpkin. But I don’t need the costume as some keepsake taking up space in the back of a closet. The photos are enough.

Day 8 of Decluttering – A bunch of stuff that my mom convinced me to take a couple of months ago when she was decluttering. She thought my kids would like the old clothes for dress up. But my kids actually like to play dress-up with costumes that are their size. Or, if they want to try grownup clothes, they raid the master bedroom closet and try the clothes that mom and dad wear in real life. But I kept the hand-offs from my mom for a couple of months because what if my kids changed their minds and suddenly wanted a hoard of old adult clothes for dress up? Well, I don’t want to live with that sort of fear mentality. I live in a major city. If my kids suddenly adopt new dress up habits, I can raid a thrift store and get tons of clothes for cheap. In the meantime, I don’t need to trip over a trash bag of rejected clothes every time I get Julian’s pajamas. I let these specific items go:

• a dress I wore in the 6th grade to an aunt’s wedding
• another fancy dress that I wore as a kid
• an embroidered shawl
• several fancy dresses that belonged to my sister
• a random belt
• someone’s childhood plaid dress
• my high school graduation dress (it’s white and shiny and I vaguely remember keeping it in case I wanted to dye it someday for a Halloween party. I haven’t dyed it in 22 years. Yeah. It’s never getting dyed.)

Day 9 of Decluttering:

• Two little Halloween ghosts that get bigger when you put them in water. We put the tiny ghosts in water. And they did indeed get bigger. And then they just floated around in a glass on the counter for two months because the texture was slimy and gross and what else could we do with them? Oh, hey, I know: let’s put them in the trash because Halloween is over.
• A Hello Kitty clock that makes an annoying ticking sound. I asked Pippa if she wants it in her room. She looked at me like I’m crazy.
• A shoe box. Because I keep shoe boxes in case I need them for storage. But I have little people. And my little people are constantly growing. They need new shoes YESTERDAY TODAY AND EVERY TOMORROW. I don’t need to hoard shoe boxes. There’s always a new one coming into the house.
• An empty plastic container that came with baby wipes. Again, I kept it because it could be used for storage. But it wasn’t. Hello, recycling bin!
• An old Tupperware piece. See prior two items.
• An orange metal flower pot that came with a grocery store plant. I liked the plant but never liked the pot. Why do I punish myself by keeping these things?
• Some of Pippa’s old camp craft projects from last summer, like a corn husk doll. She’ll be back at camp again this summer, doing all the art projects she can. I can’t keep every project she keeps. Or we’d be buried alive.
• Stale Halloween candy.
• And about twenty little Halloween knick knacks like pencils and erasers and stickers which we will count as the final two entries for the Declutter 10. Because it’s my project, so I get to make these sort of declarations.

Day 10 of Decluttering (whew, I highly doubt anyone is reading this, but I enjoy writing it so there you go):

• A bunch of Ralph’s receipts on the fridge. We have to submit $3000 of script to Julian’s preschool. (And if you don’t know what script is, consider yourself blessed.) We satisfy this obligation with receipts from our grocery store. But woot woot, we have hit the mark already! So we can stop sticking the receipts beneath a fridge magnet.
• A bag of clothes that I packed up before I started this project but then left on the bedroom floor because that’s so helpful. I moved it to the official Goodwill/babysitter pile. (The babysitter gets first crack and then I take the rest to Goodwill.)
• Several pounds of old, dried up play dough. We made a new batch of homemade play dough and the old stuff was getting rank. (By “getting rank,” I mean that there is probably a chemical warfare unit that would be interested in the stuff.)
• All sorts of play dough tools (at least 15) that the kids never use. This put me over the Declutter 10 goal, but since Julian was busy with our fresh batch of play dough, I was happy to clean out our play dough bin.

This is such an adventure. I’m losing weight and losing clutter in the house. The two projects definitely feel related. Maybe emotionally?